Saturday, May 12, 2007

Comic Book Movies


With Spider-Man 3 shattering all previous records in box office bucks, I thought I'd share Rotten Tomatoes list of Worst to Best comic book movies.

They rated a total of 94 movies. The worst, at #94, is Son of the Mask. It received a 4% - that's failing in my book.

Fast forwarding to the middle of the pack, exactly half way through their list at #47 is Uzumaki. Honestly, I've never heard of it until now, not as a comic or a movie. I don't even think it is in English. They give it a 55%.

Now - the top 10 best comic book movies, from the Rotten Tomatoes critics are:
10. Metropolis Animated and Japanese from 2002. 91%
9. Superman: The Movie from 1978. 93%
8. Batman Begins from 2005. 84%
7. Men in Black from 1997. 92%
6. A History of Violence from 2005. 86%
5. X-2: X-Men United from 2003. 87%
4. Spider-Man from 2002. 90%
3. Ghost World from 2001. 92% (I think that this was a foreign film, but I'm not sure)
2. American Splendor from 2003. 94%

And Rotten Tomatoes BEST comic book film is... Spider-Man 2 from 2004 with a 93%.

They had the Fantastic Four movie from two years ago at #79 - OUCH. Now while it wasn't a great film, I think it deserves a little bit more credit than this. Especially since movies like Supergirl (#77), Spawn (#69) and Barb Wire (#63) were all judged as better movies according to this list. Daredevil only ranked #55. a X-Men 3: Last Stand was #39--maybe too high of a ranking in my book. The new Spider-Man 3 movie only made it to #35, and 300 was the next after that at #34 (this movie was way better than 34 in my opinion). My really big WHAT THE HECK was that Hulk was #32 - that one should have gotten a higher number (worse) than Daredevil and Spider-Man 3. V for Vendetta was only #22--I thought they were leaning towards the artsy films, but if that was the case then V should have ranked higher.

Be sure to check out the list yourself. I'm not even sure they're all really comic book movies. What do you think?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lisa,

Just for a quick FYI, Uzumaki is a Japanese flick based off of a popular horror manga from a while back. I thought it was excellent - VERY VERY bizarre though. It's just a really weird J-horror film, almost too strange to describe. It's in Japanese with English subtitles. Fans of David Lynch, Cronenberg, etc. would really like it, but it's safe to say the vast majority of mainstream moviegoers would hate it.

- Rick

Anonymous said...

"ghost world" is based on Dan Clowe's book and its Scarlott Johanson's first movie when she was 16. Its set in a small American town and is very non-foreign.

Lisa said...

WOW! You both know your movies.

Scott - I thought I saw "Germany" as the release country, but I went back and see that it was also US and UK. Thanks for clarifying!

James Meeley said...

Just out of curiousity (and because I'm too lazy to go look), where exactly did Sin City place in the list? As what is arguably the more FAITHFUL movie adaptation of a comic series, I'd be interested to know where it ranked on the list.

Lisa said...

James, I don't think I saw Sin City anywhere on the list at all, now that you mention it.

Anonymous said...

... and, of course, 300...

- Rick

Lisa said...

300 was #34.